Reviews for dog wheelchairs on Amazon. Are they Fake or Real?

If you research dog wheelchairs on Amazon and check some of the reviews, you’ll notice that some of the really obscure brands that look cheap and flimsy have hundreds of great reviews while the top-selling high quality chair has fewer reviews. Ever wonder why?

Well, I think I’ve figured it out. Turns out that Amazon reviews are not always real (surprise!) Often, the seller of an inferior product will “arrange for” good reviews. Fortunately these can be detected. A site called ReviewMeta.com has an ingenious way of detecting reviews that are probably fake. I’ll explain some of their logic, but first, let’s look at some of the results.

18 Reviews of 4.6 or higher have been deleted. This could indicate that the reviews were flagged as suspicious.29% (61 highly positive reviews) have unverified purchases. Verified purchaser reviews are less happy. That means that 61 people who have no record of purchases love the product while people who definitely bought the product, well, not so much.14% (31 highly positive reviews) reviewed only this product. That is suspicious because most people who review products review several others. Are they fake accounts?17% (36 highly positive reviewers) have no verified purchases. People with verified purchases were not so impressed.10% (21 people) have had previous reviews deleted. Are they repeat offenders?15% (33 highly positive reviews) had repetitive phrases. They don’t sound natural and the ones without repetitive phrases rated the product much lower.

Overall, ReviewMeta was not impressed with the reviews of this product.

Let’s contrast this with a top-selling, high-quality brand, the Walkin’ Wheels

Although the reviews are fewer, ReviewMeta likes them. They appear to be real.

Here’s a Really bad one!

After adjusting this product’s ranking for unnatural reviews, it gets just over a 2.5 star rating!